“Power is the ability to occupy and influence people’s imagination.”

—1.9


“Great leadership is about creating the feeling of nostalgia. You want people to crave something they cannot fully get. Be it a goal, a mission, a lifestyle, a noble ideal. Moreover, you want your presence to feel like home.”

—1.11


“Meritocracy is the story we tell to help you rationalize the choices that are made on your behalf. Meritocracy explains failure more effectively than success.”

—1.24


“Human nature is not a problem for you to solve.”

—1.27

“It is through dialogue and the repeated interrogation of meaning that a person’s importance becomes established. If your audience is divorced from your thought process, you have no influence over their actions.”

—2.4


“The masses use language to explain and self-justify. The ruling class uses language to influence perception.”

—2.5


“You could say that the entire responsibility of the ruling class is to continuously produce in the masses the feeling of being seen and heard.”

—2.8


“The language of power is seductive. The language of suffering is reactive.”

—2.10


“Don’t express sympathy for a person—express sympathy for emotions.”

—2.13

“If the ruling class had an essential command, it would be to replace all meaning with ideology.”

—3.6


“Ideology produces fear, and fear produces exhaustion. Exhaustion is the life force of voluntary oppression.”

—3.7


“Ideology is exhausting by design. Thought leadership, “new” theories about happiness and success, the endless need for therapy, and political campaigns promising to change everything without changing anything—these are just some of the products we sell under the brand of ideology.”

—3.10


“All ideologies teach their followers a kind of performative humility with which to understand suffering in their lives.”

—3.16

“We pay attention to people who are slightly unpredictable, who will say and do things that make life seem more exciting. This is what we mean by charisma. The ruling class rules because we have your attention.”

—4.1


“While we’re trained to articulate a reflexive aversion to acts of villainy, one could say the very idea of charisma is rooted in the expression of villainy.”

—4.5


“Making small, inconsequential iterations while talking about big, important ideas is a key skill every leader should learn.”

—4.8


“The fog of war pervades everyday life. Remember, taking any kind of decisive action will create both excitement and confusion. That is in essence the fog of war. Your enemy is indecisiveness and boredom. Your battlefield is meaning.”

—4.16

“Once you can make a living talking about success rather than actively achieving it, you have reached the pinnacle of success.”

—5.1


“Contrary to conventional wisdom, you should never focus on how people feel toward you. Instead, focus on understanding how people feel about themselves.”

—5.5


“Never underestimate the fear of losing relevance. The world is so full of chaos the last thing people want is to feel like they don’t matter anymore. Families, companies, and nations all nurture the feeling of belonging. Progress is secondary. You achieve success when you make people feel like they belong.”

—5.8

“Once we mythologize the journey, all sorts of hardships can be justified. This is why our leaders impress upon young people the importance of “hard work.” At first, hard work feels pedantic and painful. Over time, reinforced by competition, we begin to mythologize hard work to mean adventure. How else can the human mind cope with meaningless toil? We’re afraid of asking too many questions because the real answer will never satisfy our need for meaning. It may well be better to live inside a pervasive but hopeful fear than to find out that nothing matters in the end.”

—6.5


“The more unattainable a goal is, the more conflicts will be created. The more conflicts there are, the more people will compete against each other rather than disputing the goal. When people compete against each other, they find new reasons to be unhappy about themselves. Unhappiness leads to more work, and more work restores credibility to ruling power.”

—6.8


“It is our relationship to pain that allows us to understand our place in the world.”

—6.17

“The illusion of control reduces rational actors into beasts of burden.”

—7.2


“The need to impose meaning onto the world is not the same as critical thinking. We, the ruling class, resent brave people who think critically about the world. Instead, we love people who teach you new ways to savor the moment-to-moment struggle of everyday life.”

—7.4


“When people feel a sense of autonomy, the world becomes easier to understand. I act, therefore I am.”

—7.8


“When we seek refuge in being busy, we become happy slaves.”

—7.11